“Schusssss!” Betsy declared. “Now, here’s how you put these things on.”
While Stevie watched, in case she would ever live to do this again, Betsy slid the skis under her feet, lined them up with the oversized boots Stevie was already wearing, snapped a few things, and declared the job done.
“They won’t come off?” Stevie asked.
“Not unless you want them to, or if you need them to,” Betsy said. “See, they are designed to snap off if you start tugging on them at awkward angles. That’s a signal to the ski that you’re in trouble. If you’ve fallen and are tumbling, the last thing you want is to have skis attached to your boots, so they simply snap loose and you’re free.”
“To fall?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Betsy said. “But I guess that’s what it amounts to. Now, are you ready? This is the beginner slope. It may be a little tricky for you, but I’m sure you can do it.”
Stevie took a pole in each hand and tried to lift her foot.
“Slide, don’t li—” Betsy began, but it was too late. The tip of Stevie’s ski had caught in a little clod of snow. As Stevie lost her balance, the other ski slid forward and she slid backward, onto her seat.
“Congratulations,” Betsy said. “That’s your first fall. Now you’re a bona fide snow bunny.”
She offered Stevie a hand and helped her back up. Before Stevie tried to move again, Betsy gave her a few pointers. She showed her how to walk, without lifting her toes.
Stevie tried again. This time she stayed upright. The skis made little pathways for themselves in the spring snow. When Stevie stopped walking, she even found that the skis continued sliding.
“I’m skiing!” Stevie declared. Betsy beamed because it was true.
They spent most of the next half hour stepping and sliding around at the top of the hill. Then Betsy said it was time to try some downhill skiing.
“Like the Olympians?” Stevie asked eagerly.
“No, like a beginning skier,” Betsy replied sensibly. She then turned, as she had shown Stevie how to do it, and faced slightly downhill. “We’ll make a zigzag pattern,” she said. “That way you’re never completely going downhill except, of course, when we turn from a zig to a zag.”
Stevie thought she had the idea. Betsy led the way; Stevie followed. It took a lot of concentration, but Stevie found she could actually control her direction and her speed, just a little bit. Of course, there was the time she lost control and whizzed past Betsy, straight into another beginner. The two of them fell down together and laughed together. Then they tried to help one another up. It took Betsy’s help to succeed.
Soon Stevie realized that falling down wasn’t so bad. It usually meant sitting down more than anything else, and it also usually meant falling on the soft snow—except when Stevie toppled onto another skier, or one toppled onto her.
“Hey, I’m really getting the hang of this,” she said, having worked her way back to a standing position all by herself. “I think that was my seventeenth fall. Does that mean I’m still just a snow bunny, or have I become something bigger, like maybe a snow elephant?”
Betsy didn’t have time to answer the question before Stevie fell again. This time she announced “Eighteen!” on her way down.
As the afternoon wore on, Stevie fell less often and remained standing more often. She found that not only could she control the skis and her direction and her speed some of the time, she could even do it most of the time.
It took them more than an hour to get to the bottom of the hill the first time. The second time it was a mere twenty minutes.
“This is really great!” Stevie declared.
“I knew you’d love it, and I knew it wouldn’t take you long to get the hang of it,” Betsy said. “Anybody who is as fast a learner as you with horses is sure to be good on skis as well.”
“Are they connected?” Stevie asked while she executed a near-perfect turn—meaning she didn’t fall down or hit anybody and she ended up in the direction she wanted.
“No, it’s just that you’re smart and coordinated. Those things are important.”
Stevie felt very proud of her accomplishment. Within the next hour she even found herself giving pointers to beginners she found floundering in the snow at her feet.
“Get up and try again,” she urged one person. “It’s really worth it once you get the hang of it.”
“Come on, let me show you this little side path,” Betsy said. “You’re good enough now, and it is part of the beginners’ trail.”
Stevie followed obediently. At first she didn’t see the trail at all. All she saw was a row of fir trees with their snow-covered branches hanging all the way to the ground. Betsy went straight up to one of the branches, lifted it up, and went under. Stevie did the same.
As soon as she went under the branch, it was as if she had entered a magical kingdom. Suddenly there was total silence. The blanket of snow on the branches made walls and a ceiling for a hideaway, muffling all the outside sounds. She and Betsy were standing in a naturally made cathedral.
Stevie was stunned. She was afraid to move. If she moved, it might shatter the dream and it would all disappear. Then she and Betsy would be back out on the noisy slope, surrounded by tumbling snow bunnies. “If I blink, will it go away?” she asked.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Betsy answered. “Dinah and I discovered this last year when one of her skis broke off and slid under that tree. This beginners’ slope is filled with people who have never been here before and probably will graduate to intermediate tomorrow. They never find it and they never come back. It’s ours.” Betsy began moving again, slowly. “Come on,” she said. “We can sit on that rock over there.…”
Stevie followed, very carefully. All of her senses were alert. She felt the cool air on her face, and the smooth motion of her skis beneath her. The muffled silence surrounded her. The scent of fresh evergreen filled her.
Betsy looked over her shoulder at Stevie and laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it will be here forever, at least until the snow melts. Then it just changes colors. Dinah and I walked up here last summer. It was different, but it was the same.” She leaned over and unsnapped her skis. Then she helped Stevie do the same. They propped their skis and their poles against a tree trunk. Betsy led Stevie up onto a rock. She dusted snow off the crest of it and sat down, inviting Stevie to do the same.
“Dinah and I called this the palace throne,” she said. Stevie could see why. It was higher than anything else in the magical clearing and overlooked the whole kingdom. From there Stevie could even see a little stream, bubbling beneath layers of snow and ice.
“This is almost my favorite part of skiing,” Betsy said. “Jodi likes to do downhill racing. My parents are cross-country buffs. Me? I like both kinds of skiing, but mostly I like the beauty of a place like this.”
“So everybody in your family skis?” Stevie asked.
“Definitely,” Betsy said. “Just about everybody in Vermont skis. It’s a sort of unofficial state pastime.”
“And horseback riding? Are you all riders as well?”
“I guess so. Jodi and I have been riding for a long time.”
“She’s really good, isn’t she?” Stevie asked.
“Sort of,” Betsy said. “Personally, I think she’s more in love with the glamour of riding than she is with horses. She even wears her breeches to school sometimes. And you should have heard her boasting when she got the job at Sugarbush. She knows her stuff, but it’s like she almost doesn’t care.”
Stevie thought about the Jodi that Dinah admired so much. It seemed hard to think that Dinah’s Jodi was the same person Betsy was describing. How could somebody who didn’t care about horses be so worried about Dinah and about keeping her job?
“Aren’t you being a little hard on your sister?” Stevie asked.
Betsy shrugged.
Stevie picked up a handful of snow and automatically began shaping it into a snowball.
She didn’t intend to throw it, however. That wouldn’t have felt right in this magical place. She merely tossed it from hand to hand. “What about your parents?” she asked. “Do they ride?”
“They’re trying to become riders,” Betsy answered. “One night at dinner last fall Dad announced that because Jodi and I were spending so much time at Sugarbush, he and Mom had figured that the only way they’d get to see us was if they started spending time there as well. They signed up for a bunch of classes and they ride regularly. Dad says he’s going to take a jump class this summer. Isn’t that neat?”
“Definitely,” Stevie agreed. Stevie’s feeling about horseback riding was that it was so much fun that nobody should miss out on it. She wouldn’t have minded at all if her parents had decided to take it up—as long as they weren’t in her class and didn’t try to tag along on her fun with Carole and Lisa.
“Is your mother good, too?” Stevie asked.
“She mostly likes to go on trail rides. Fortunately there are zillions of trails through the woods here, so she doesn’t get bored.”
“Oh, I know there are,” Stevie said.
“You do? How?” Betsy asked.
“Well, Dinah and I—” Stevie stopped short. Betsy didn’t know about Dinah’s accident. She also didn’t know that Stevie and Dinah had been on a trail at the time. Nobody knew that. Nobody could know that. “—Dinah and I were talking about them last night. She told me there were zillions. I wish I could go on some of them, too.”
“Too bad you can’t,” Betsy said. “That’s the one drawback of the sugaring off. Mr Daviet won’t let anybody ride on the trails. By the end of the week, he’ll relent a little. He usually takes a couple of riders out on a trail ride or two, but don’t count on it. For now, he’s too busy at the Sugar Hut anyway.”
Stevie sighed silently to herself. She’d come close to giving away the secret, but she hadn’t. She didn’t think Betsy even suspected.
Betsy told her they should be getting back. If they worked quickly, they’d have time for one more run on the mountain before they had to go home. Very carefully Stevie took the ball of snow she’d been shaping, formed it back into a flat piece of snow, and put it back approximately where she’d found it. It didn’t look exactly undisturbed, but it was the best way Stevie had of leaving the magical cathedral close to the way she’d found it. She wanted to find it that way when she returned, and she promised herself she would, someday.
*
“SKIING IS WONDERFUL!” Stevie announced to Dinah when she returned to the Slatterys later that day. “Oh, I wish you could have been there. It was such fun!”
“Did Betsy show you the castle?”
Stevie grinned and nodded. “Is that what you call it? I couldn’t decide between a castle and a cathedral.”
“Well, the throne …”
They took some time to decide which it was. In the end they concluded that it was a cathedral in a castle that had thrones for the reigning royals. Even more important, they decided they would go together someday soon.
“Your mother told me you wouldn’t eat anything. She’s getting worried about your stomachache. But how are you doing?” Stevie asked, noting with some disappointment that Dinah was still in bed.
“More or less okay,” she said. “Fortunately, I’ve managed to keep my mother from noticing my face, but everything really hurts.”
“Let’s take a look,” Stevie said in her most matter-of-fact, mother-taking-charge tone of voice. Obediently Dinah swung her feet over the edge of the bed and sat upright. First Stevie checked the scrape on her face. It was definitely ugly, but it seemed to be healing. Then Dinah hiked up her pajama bottoms to display the damage on her legs. Stevie examined them, pretending that Dinah was a horse who needed some tending. Stevie was pretty good at tending to horses. She didn’t have much experience with humans, but she figured they couldn’t be terribly different. At least she hoped they weren’t.
The long scrape on Dinah’s leg was red, but less so than it had been. “The infection is going away,” Stevie said. “See how the redness is paling. So keep putting the goo on it. The same goo should go on your face, too. It helps.”
There was a deep purple bruise on one thigh that Dinah said hurt, but was okay. Stevie agreed. It was just a bruise. No swelling or anything. Then, on one of Dinah’s knees Stevie found something that worried her a little. It was purplish and swollen. The bruise had the distinct shape of a horseshoe.
“I think I remember Goldie using that knee as a starting block for his hundred-meter dash,” Dinah joked weakly. “It’s hard to put weight on it.”
Stevie wrinkled her brow and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You need a leg wrap,” she said finally.
Dinah laughed. “You think I’m some kind of a horse?”
“Not really,” Stevie said. “But you know if you saw that kind of swelling on a horse, you’d wrap it, right?”
“I guess,” Dinah agreed. “But you were always better at horse care than I was.”
“So wouldn’t that be right for a person, too?”
“Why not?” Dinah answered. “I think there’s an elastic bandage in the bathroom. You do the honors.”
Stevie felt comfortable doing this. Horses often needed to have their legs wrapped. Sometimes it was to help with healing. Other times it was to avoid injuries. In any case, one of the first things she’d learned to do for horses was to wrap legs. She did it quickly and efficiently.
“Makes me feel like having oats for supper,” Dinah said. She giggled. Then she whinnied for emphasis. It was just about the first laugh Stevie had heard from her since her fall. It sounded very good to Stevie. She thought that maybe laughter would be better medicine even than leg wraps.
“No, hot mash,” Stevie said. “We believe in it for our sick horses. Of course, the vet says it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference to the horses, but it makes us feel better.”
Then Stevie finished checking the other wounds. Like the first bad scratch and the bruise, they all appeared painful, but healing.
“Now it’s time to walk you around the paddock a few times,” Stevie said. “If you don’t keep moving at least a little, you’re going to stiffen up.”
Dinah was afraid and Stevie could see it. She was afraid of how much it was going to hurt. Stevie didn’t know what to do for a person who was afraid, but she knew what to do for a horse who was. The first thing any rider did with a frightened horse was to talk. Stevie helped Dinah stand up, and she began talking.
“I couldn’t believe how high that beginners’ hill was when we first got off the lift,” she began, holding one of Dinah’s arms across her shoulder and putting her own arm around her friend’s waist. She helped her stand. “The lift ride had made it seem like nothing at all, but the first look down …”
Dinah took a few steps.
“… then by the time I’d fallen down eighteen times, I seemed to be getting the hang of it—skiing, I mean, not falling down.”
Dinah laughed and walked some more. Stevie let her walk more on her own.
“I’ve got to tell you, though, there are a lot of people out on that hill who really don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just falling all over the place. One guy actually fell on me twice! Of course, I’d already fallen into the snow by the time he fell on me!”
Stevie could feel Dinah shaking. She looked at her in alarm. But Dinah was just shaking with laughter. She continued to walk around her own room, more confident with each step.
“Oh, I do wish I’d been there,” she said.
“You will be next time,” Stevie promised. And from the way Dinah was walking, Stevie was pretty sure she was right.
A FEW DAYS later Stevie found herself running up the stairs to Dinah’s room.
“You’ve got to get up,” she said. “All the while when your mother was giving me breakfast, she was talking about doctors. She also said something about Kaopectate and milk of magnesia. What I mean is you’ve got to get up.”<
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Dinah sat bolt upright in bed, swung her feet around, and stood up without hesitating. She grimaced instead. “I can do it. I will do it.”
“You’re darn right you will. We can’t have your mother taking you off to a doctor.”
“No way.”
Dinah got dressed. Slowly.
Stevie recreated her “makeover” look as she’d done each day since the accident.
“This hairdo is really something,” Dinah said, giggling, as she examined Stevie’s handiwork in the mirror over her bureau. “Do you think it will become fashionable sometime, someplace?”
“Wherever and whenever that is, I hope I’m not there,” Stevie said. Dinah agreed.
“IS SOMETHING WRONG?” Betsy asked.
The big flat sleigh with the collecting vat had just jolted to an awkward halt. Dinah was wincing in pain from the amount of pulling she’d had to do on the reins to get the horse to stop.
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m just not as good at this as you are.”
“Then let me do it,” Betsy persisted. She’d been trying to get Stevie and Dinah to let her take the reins since they’d started. The one thing Dinah and Stevie had agreed on before they’d gotten to the Sugar Hut that morning was that Dinah would have to be the driver. There was no way she could walk in the snow and collect sap. She still hurt too much.
“No, I’m fine,” Dinah assured her. “I’ve just got to learn to do this right.”
“That’s for sure,” Betsy said a little unkindly.
“There are some more of our buckets!” Stevie said, attempting to change the subject. Dinah got the horse moving and drew up near the next grove of their sugar maples.
Stevie and Betsy hopped down off the sleigh and headed for the buckets. It took only a few minutes to empty the buckets into the vat. It took only a few more minutes to remove the spiles from the tree trunks. Sugaring time was coming to an end, and all the riders had been instructed to remove their equipment, too. All the buckets and spiles were loaded onto the back of the sleigh, and they went off in search of another grove with their buckets on the trees.
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